


In the Midst of the Smoke

by A_God_A_Vampire_And_Two_Heirs_Of_Durin



Series: Will We Be Stuck Like This Forever? [5]
Category: Being Human (UK), The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Injury, M/M, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 10:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2021016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_God_A_Vampire_And_Two_Heirs_Of_Durin/pseuds/A_God_A_Vampire_And_Two_Heirs_Of_Durin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out of the smoke came a familiar pair of dark eyes and a well known smile which made his knees go weak all over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Midst of the Smoke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OctobersLily510](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OctobersLily510/gifts), [FiliKiliThorinForever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiliKiliThorinForever/gifts).



> OctobersLily510 prompted: "Pirate/Rich guy held to ransom, or the navy man trying to capture the pirate..."
> 
> FiliKiliThorinForever prompted: "Maybe a pirate ship one, on enemy ships, one gets stuck under the mast as the ship sinks or something? Or shot maybe?"
> 
> I've combined these two prompts and altered them just a little to get them to fit but I hope that everyone still enjoys this :)

He had never been overly fond of the sea. Joining the Royal Navy was more of fulfilment of a longstanding family tradition than a great dream of his own, but he’d enrolled anyway, serving on several ships on several nondescript voyages, none of which had been particularly thrilling.

However, his current orders ran along an entirely different track to any of the previous ones, and he found himself on one of the Navy’s most heavily armed ships, seeking out pirates in the Caribbean. And to be honest, the heavily-armed aspect was mostly an unnecessary attachment, for most of the ‘pirates’ they were hunting were merely rather drunken merchants who had mistakenly loaded their vessels with too many barrels of goods which did not belong to them.

There were the occasional ones though who lived up to their fearsome reputations, but he’d never met any of them; he’d only heard the stories that the other men told when they’d had slightly too much rum over a game of cards.

Of course, when he’d first joined the Navy, he’d expected his fellow sailors to be sharply disciplined whenever they were on duty. But he’d quickly learnt that this was not the case, and when at sea a number of the men became as rough as the pirates they were hunting. They’d still follow the captain’s orders, if he gave any, but a fair proportion had been press-ganged and therefore spent idle time pretending they were merely on a pleasant voyage.

He wasn’t one of them. He followed orders and the Navy expectations at all times, and carried out his tasks almost before they had been delegated to him. He did not truly want to be a sailor but he felt that there was no point making his work any harder for himself.

Anyway, he’d always been an outsider; why should he change that now?

He’d been small for his age as a child and now wasn’t much better. He was the one who could spin words and words and words until the sentence just rolled off his tongue like the English language had been made solely for him. He could do just about anything with words, but sadly the Navy required the use of actual weapons and he had been forced to use pistols and swords rather than poetry and prose.

Unfortunately, the Navy was also not the place to find similarly educated companions, and he had, on more than one occasion, been mocked by the other sailors for the mere fact that he was literate. All that had served to do was convince him that people were untrustworthy and cruel creatures to be avoided as much as possible.

And so, for the most of the time, he holed himself up below deck in his cabin sketching the image of a man he had never met, yet whose face appeared in his dreams nearly every night. This was the one man that he knew would not be as cruel or callous as the others; the one man who would immediately know him better than anyone else.

He’d never been particularly sentimental but his sketches were his one salvation when he could take his crewmates no longer. He would retire to his cabin and be soothed by the calmness reflected in the expressive dark eyes on the page in front of him.

It was during a moment within his private sanctuary that there was suddenly a shout from above deck. They’d sighted a ship, pirates most likely, headed straight for them.

“Usually it’s us chasing them,” he overheard one of the men say to his companion as he headed up to lend a hand to their upcoming task.

“I say we hit them head on,” said another, “Board them before they try to board us.”

Before too long, he found himself somewhere high in the rigging, sorting the sails, when he caught a glimpse of the pirate ship himself. The vessel was of a similar size to theirs, and if he squinted hard enough, the blond could just make out the figures darting about across the deck.

Yet there was one figure in particular which caught his eye, a tall man, dressed in dark clothing, stood firmly at the stern, surveying the rest of the crew intently; the captain, then. It was only when someone yelled at him to stop the rope going slack that he realised that he had been staring.

Hurriedly, he finished his job and began his descent back down to the deck, but not before he’d glanced one last time at the captain of the other ships, catching a glimpse of dark curls flying under his hat as the sea breeze blew through them. His fingers clenched on the rigging involuntarily and he felt his knees give way. Fighting to remain upright and not fall several metres on the deck, he kept his eyes trained on the dark figure.

He watched the way that he paced the ship, checking on a sailor’s task occasionally or pausing to talk to someone who approached him. It was such a familiar sight, yet so new and unknown, and it made his heart clench in anticipation.

“Oi, Johnson! Do you want to maybe get down from there and help, man?” a shout from below startled him and looking down he caught sight of the ship’s lieutenant glaring at him in annoyance.

He had no choice but to try and get his limbs to carry him back down safely, yet as he looked across the other ship for the last time, watching it draw ever closer, the captain suddenly looked up and even at the distance they were at from each other, they locked gazes. The unexpected eye contact left him breathless all of a sudden, and it was all he could do to climb back down the rope as quickly as possible. He didn’t stay around long enough to see whether it had affected the other man in a similar way.

“Men, at your stations!” the sound of the captain’s voice had everyone running across the deck in different directions, already rushing to carry out their pre-assigned jobs.

“This’ll be a big one,” one of the men to his left said, “Aye, none of those pathetic merchants that we’ve been chasing around this whole ocean for the past couple of weeks.”

“Do you know who the ship’s captain is?” he managed to speak without his voice shaking.

The man looked a little surprised at the fact that he was voluntarily talking to him, but answered regardless.

“Haven’t a clue, but I overheard the captain saying that he was a bad one and this wouldn’t be no walk in the park like the others, that’s for sure.”

He nodded quickly and then turned away, too confused to do anything else. One part of him was overjoyed to have finally found him, but the other half screamed at him in panic that they were about to engage in a battle which could take either or both of their lives, and there was no way of finding him and speaking to him before the cannons would begin firing and the swords would be drawn.

He would never be sure who had fired first but suddenly there was an almighty explosion which rocked both ships with the force of it. And then another followed in quick succession, and then another and another.

And just like that, chaos descended on both sides and whatever form of discipline the Navy’s sailors might have had was lost in the moment that the sides of the two ships collided and men began jumping freely from vessel to vessel.

In the midst of this, he went searching for the one man he had wanted to see his entire life. Ducking and diving past men who should have been his allies and men who should have been his enemies, yet never taking much notice of any of them, he found himself miraculous unharmed and onboard the pirate ship.

The sea air was filled with smoke from the cannons, and the breeze was now tinged with the tang of gunpowder. It made his eyes water and he was faced with the sudden panic that he would be stumbling blindly through this hazy fog for the rest of the battle with no idea where exactly he was, when suddenly a hand grasped his upper arm tightly and dragged him across the deck.

He was abruptly pushed up against the side of something, he could feel wooden boarding scraping at his back, and he assumed that it must be a cabin of some sort. Out of the smoke came a familiar pair of dark eyes and a well known smile which made his knees go weak all over again.

“Hello, Anders,” the captain said, and before the blond could open his mouth to reply, he found his arms wound tightly around the other man’s neck as he was pinned firmly up against the wooden boarding and kissed passionately.

“We can’t do this here,” he finally managed to get out in between trying to get some air into his lungs. “Someone might see.”

“I doubt it, you couldn’t see a thing a minute ago.”

“Until I was rudely dragged away by someone.”

“I didn’t see you complaining.”

Anders laughed.

“Of course not, John. It is John, isn’t it?”

The other man stepped back a little and bowed formally.

“Captain Mitchell, at your service,” he grinned, “Though I suppose I could let you call me John.”

“You wouldn’t have stopped me anyway,” the blond replied, reaching his arms out so that Mitchell could step back into them.

Their lips met softly again, Anders’ hands framing Mitchell’s face as though making sure that he was most definitely real.

Suddenly, there was another burst of cannon fire which had both of them separating in the shock of being brought back to reality.

“I’ve got to see to my crew,” Mitchell said, “It won’t do if they think I’m dead. I can’t make you hide out here, just stay safe and find me afterwards, I’d be happy to welcome you to my crew.”

“I wish I could say the same about mine,” Anders replied, “But I can’t. Stay safe yourself; I’ll do my best to stay out of trouble.”

And with one last kiss, Mitchell turned, slipping a pistol from his belt and disappearing into the smoke. Anders leaned his head back against the wood to catch his breath for a moment, before taking his own pistol and rounding the corner of the cabin.

Everything around him was heated and hazy. He fired his pistol twice before being forced to reload it, something which took precious time, and he had no idea whether or not his bullets had found their mark. Every time the smoke cleared a little and he caught a glimpse of men around him and the blue of the sea glittering in the distance, another cannon was fired and the air became a fog again.

A blade caught his arm as he passed whoever was holding it, but his search for higher ground where the air would be clearer took him out of reach in case his attacker decided to follow through with a few more blows after the first cut. He barely even felt the wound, too intent on his path across the ship’s deck.

He was nearly at the flight of wooden steps to the upper deck when someone barrelled into him and pushed him several feet to the side, knocking him off balance and causing him to collapse onto the floor.

And that’s when he heard it.

That deafening creaking noise.

He couldn’t see what it was, his eyes squeezed tightly shut against the thickening smoke, but something snapped and fell to the deck with a splintering crash. There was a sudden uproar as someone cried out in shock and then everyone was shouting at once.

Anders opened his eyes, rolling over and grabbing his discarded pistol which lay to one side before pushing himself into a sitting position to survey the damage.

There were fragments of wood littering the deck, some of them from the fractured boards but most from the mast which no longer stood upright but instead now lay across half the main deck, it’s top buried into what was now the ruined upper deck. The sails, still attached, billowed in the breeze, swathing the majority of the ship in white.

And then, suddenly:

“Captain! Captain!”

Anders looked up at the man, whose face was horror-struck. He didn’t recognise him, dressed in plain clothing with just a dash of colour in the bright silk scarf he had tied around his neck. Obviously a pirate.

Wait, which meant that his captain was…

Anders spun around and practically threw himself back along the deck on his hands and knees, splinters catching in his palms. He didn’t care that there were still men fighting around him, that his fellow Navy sailors were staring at him as though he had become a mad man; maybe he had.

He willed the sinking feeling in his stomach to go away, for the man to simply be calling for his captain to come and inspect the damage to his ship, but no amount of wishing could have dispelled the sight that met him.

Mitchell’s body was mostly hidden under the sails and the mast itself, one arm outstretched towards him, and in that instant, Anders knew that it had been Mitchell who had pushed him out of the way.

“Mitchell.”

The other man’s name was barely a pained sob on his lips, the emotion too raw and torn to let him say it properly aloud.

Mitchell’s lips twitched a little and his eyes fluttered weakly. His mouth moved in some sort of silent message, but the blond could not decipher it, no matter how hard he tried.

Slowly, Anders stretched out his hand to take Mitchell’s comfortingly when there was the sudden and unmistakable sound of a pistol being cocked behind him. Mitchell’s eyes widened in fear, but Anders just kept his gaze fixed on the other man; there was no point fighting it now.

The crack of the gunpowder shook the air.

Pain blossomed across Anders’ back and he reached out his hand once more as he slumped forward.

His fingers just brushed the tips of Mitchell’s as their eyes closed together.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still accepting any prompts for this verse :)


End file.
